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Florida’s partial economic recovery underway – Metrics and statistics

Florida’s partial economic recovery  underway - Metrics and statistics

After nearly 6 months of economic downfall, it seems that Florida’s economy is entering the economist coined term, “partial recovery”.

The unemployment rate is plummeting, almost reaching the national average. The highest hit this metric took was during the initial weeks of the March-April lockdown of multiple businesses. But it now seems that more people are venturing outside of their homes as more businesses open up to the populace. Sure, the number of cases hasn’t improved significantly, but it was simply impossible to keep everything closed for much longer.

Things such as power bills and mortgage payments have stabilized and bankruptcy cases have decreased significantly after their Spring hike.

Other hopeful metrics include the increase in consumer spending in retail, giving corporations the possibility to retain more staff and keep unemployment to a stable level. As unemployment corrects itself, the consumer purchasing power continues to stabilize as well, contributing to the general recovery of every sector in the state.

Unemployment metrics

Unemployment is the key to solving the riddle of a sudden recovery and we need to look into it more closely.

Florida’s partial economic recovery  underway - Metrics and statistics

Source: TampaBay

After the spring peak of around 14.5 percent, the chart shows that more than half of the jobs have already been recovered as businesses started opening somewhere at the end of Summer. However, the metric stopped rapidly decreasing during July-August and will likely plateau during the remainder of Autumn.

The biggest recovery of the economy is expected to be at the end of November and December due to increased consumer spending for Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, this is a thin ice to walk on. Should Florida’s population disregard Christmas costs completely, the economy will fall back where it once was at the end of Spring. Why?

Well, think of the message that low consumer activity will send to the government. People are not going out as much to spend more so why keep businesses open and endanger the few that do actually go in them? This could be an argument used to close things down once again.

But this is highly unlikely. The majority of Florida’s population has already adjusted to the pandemic through side hustles, small business ventures, and digital platforms for other sources of income.

For example, based on information gathered from several local investment companies, the number of people that register for forex broker bonus on deposit has increased significantly despite the relatively tight regulations surrounding this industry in the USA. Similar things can be seen with other investment instruments. Activity has increased considerably due to the recent volatility hike in the markets.

This was expected by economists. A crisis starts, everybody sells as fast as they can, but most people just sit back and wait until the markets reach a historic low compared to the last shortfall. If they had gained something from the previous market fall, there was little risk in trade on levels below the last low point.

However, this hasn’t necessarily been shown in the S&P 500’s performance as a national average, but key companies in various states have recovered admirably.

Bankruptcy cases

Bankruptcies were quite surprising for Florida in 2020. Before the pandemic, the state was performing amazingly well in this regard as claims had fallen significantly. But as soon as the lockdown hit, cases hiked by around 40% almost instantly. However, just like with unemployment cases have stabilized after the relative recovery in Summer.

But this is not necessarily a metric to be used as a primary measure of economic recovery. What we lack here is information about the recovery of people who filed for bankruptcies. The decrease in number is not reliable and could be due to a multitude of reasons.

The big picture

With elections looming, there’s guaranteed to be a bit more instability in the country. Most investors have an itchy trigger finger but simply can’t pull it as the results are not yet clear. The market is poised to change alarmingly fast the moment a winner is announced and this result will have a massive impact on US markets.

It needs to be considered that different parts of the market will recover or fall depending on the winning candidate, which is the primary reason why everybody is trying to be as patient as possible.

Further complications include a hike in COVID numbers state-wide. This is not just a Florida thing either, the whole world is seeing increased numbers. European countries are already reporting cases in the tens of thousands on a daily basis.

Overall, if sufficient care is not ensured during these key 2 months before the New Year, it’s likely for economic issues to return with a second wind. And this time the hits may be bigger and harder.

 

 

South Florida Caribbean News

The SFLCN.com Team provides news and information for the Caribbean-American community in South Florida and beyond.

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